As Meat Loves Salt

A short rest followed, and as soon as we broke rank there came a steady rain. The men wandered about, complaining, or squatted on their heels until it should be time to begin again. I thought I had not done too badly, and that once accustomed to it I should perform my part as well as any.

Next was weapons drill, and we were now given to understand that we were already divided into groups according to the arms we would carry. Ferris and Nathan had been right, for I was handed a pike. Weighed in my hand it seemed bigger than the one at Beaurepair, some six yards long and so heavy it was hard to carry except on the shoulder. We stood in the rain trying not to jab each other as the corporal took us through our postures.

Handle Your Pike was no more than raising it from the ground, and as to Recover, and Order, those were just as a man might say, Plant It Thus By Your Side. Yet all around me I saw confusion, and men in the wrong without knowing it.

The corporal shouted again, ‘Order your pike!’

I stood still, my right arm extended, slightly bent, to hold the pike with its base just before my right foot.

A voice not the corporal’s said, ‘Bring the hand as high as your eyes.’

I turned. The man behind me was a greybeard, but hale and strong, with the look of a practised soldier. He indicated his weapon. ‘Thumb cocked, and your pike against it.’

‘Thanks, friend.’ I copied him, finding that the correct position held the pike firmly, but also (since we were made to wait a long time in this posture) made my arm ache.

At last we got on to Advance Your Pike, which was done in three motions. I was cack-handed here, and the movement would not come smooth. The pike, which was to be locked between my right shoulder and arm, slipped away and I had to catch it in the left hand before it brained one of my fellow scholars. We then Ordered the pike again, very like the first time, and went on to the next part.

‘Shoulder your pike!’

As I took the thing on my shoulder the top of my shoe came away from the sole. The pike dropped backwards and the others cried out to me to mind what I did. Our corporal came up to see what was the matter.

‘I can’t stand level on one shoe,’ said I. He told me to take off both, so I stood watching the mud squeeze up between my toes while he walked again to the front of the file.

‘Shoulder your pike!’

Had I known how many postures were to be gone through that day, I would have drilled with less enthusiasm. My feet cold unto numbness, I learnt how to Port, Advance, Charge For Horse, and other moves, with their endless palming, griping, raising and forsaking. Nothing could ever be done with a pike, it seemed, unless it were done in three motions, and there was already some considerable doubt in my mind as to whether men could do thus in the heat of the fight.

When the full drill had been gone through, by which time the new soldiers were reduced not to any former posture but to perplexed misery, those who could read were given a paper with the main points set down in the form of a doggerel rhyme. This I folded up and afterwards forgot.

The corporal told me to go again to the baggage train for shoes and wrote out the order. Taking it there, I was given a pair of boots, finer than anything I would have worn at home. They were even big enough, though I felt the last man’s feet moulded within them.

‘Why boots?’ I asked.

‘The latchets we have here are too small. Give me those, soldier,’ for I was still carrying my own shoes.

‘The sole is torn away from this one.’

‘No matter, we can make up a pair from two odds if we have to.’

So my shoes were put in the pile with the others and that was the last I saw of them. Once I was Jacob. I washed in sweet water for my bridegroom’s bed. Now I was Rupert, and I took my boots for battle.

We broke camp in the afternoon, and I was glad of the even road for walking. While marching along I considered what I had learnt. At Beaurepair there had been an old drill manual in Sir John’s study, designed to promote the use of Dutch tactics. All of us young men had studied it on the sly, sometimes snatching up a broom and posturing as musketeer or pikeman. We had pored over the engravings of classical battles wherein the troops advanced in orderly fashion, the files of pikes showing like square hedgehogs, and every kind of soldier keeping with his fellows. I had marvelled at this thing called an army. Yet our army marched in small knots and gaggles, the men seeking out their friends to pass the time. Sometimes these were comrades who carried the same arms, sometimes not, and I concluded that such books were like books of manners, written for that things were not done as they ought to be.

As we trudged on some of the men, especially the London lads, began to tell me of the fighting they had seen and of their dear hopes. I said they were most admirable at their drill, as indeed I thought.

‘You would be amazed to see how they drill in London,’ said Bart. ‘They’re trained to defend the city against attack, for the liberty of the people.’

‘From what you say, there are none so good in these parts,’ I admitted.

‘Another thing, most trained bands won’t go from home,’ Bart went on, warming to his subject. ‘But the London ones, well! Fifteen thousand lads, prentices mainly, regularly exercised. And they do their stuff.’

‘I wager they frighten the other side,’ I offered.

‘The Cavaliers – to speak truth, they’ve some good men but they run wild. No discipline, rag tag and bobtail.’

‘What are their men?’

‘Great lords, poor country fools…’ here he hesitated but I smiled, ‘Papists, folks from up north where they think the King pisses perfume, Irish and Welsh rabble…’

‘And men from the rich cathedral towns. Where you find a cathedral and a pack of fat priests, you find Royalists,’ put in Hugh.

‘They bring their doxies with them,’ Philip said.

Another man, walking behind us, here shouted, ‘He’s got doxies on the brain.’

‘Are there not women here also?’ I asked, for I thought to have seen some near the baggage train. ‘What are they?’

Hugh laughed. ‘Many are wives to some man here. Others are wives to all.’

‘There are women feign their sex,’ put in Bart. ‘To pass among the men without insult.’

Philip guffawed. ‘Or to whore the more freely.’

I enquired of him what happened to these soldieresses if their men were defeated. None answered me, so I asked where we were headed.

‘Now Devizes is fallen we’re off to Winchester,’ said Hugh.

‘Fallen?’

‘Aye, where have you been? And Bristol two weeks back! Your namesake was there.’

‘Mine?’

‘Prince Rupert. It was he defended the town.’

‘I knew Bristol was gone. Is Rupert dead, then?’

‘Not he. Black Tom let him go to Oxford to the King. We should have put him to the sword, but that’s Fairfax for you, honourable to a fault.’

‘He’s honour itself,’ said Bart.

‘Will you show him me?’ Though I felt Fairfax had done wrong, showing so gentlemanly to a necromancer, I was more eager to see him than ever.

Philip explained, ‘He’s gone on to Exeter. He’s black like yourself; wears his hair a bit longer, mind.’ Here they all laughed and I knew that one of them must have cropped me.

‘You’ll know him on sight,’ added Bart.

‘Was that why Rupert yielded? Because Fairfax was Fairfax?’